Abraham in Egypt

[Latter Day Data]

14 hours ago, helix said:

Serious: Can you point to any other instance when a name is purposely used to help form a shape?  Such as another name whose characters help form the petals of a lotus?  Or a name as part of the shape of a crocodile, a jar, a boat, etc.?

Non-serious: I just can't resist.  Many such Egyptian scenes have birds. Can you find a word in a bird?  Because as everybody knows, the bird is a word. 

 

I want to stress how much I appreciate your focus on substance. 

Above, I provided a couple examples in the form of screenshots from literature describing this “type” of thing. Let me know if you can read the screenshots. 

Also, in an above post I showed a famous rebus of Ramesses. 

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, Latter Day Data said:

Thank you for talking about substance. 

James P. Allen explained it well in Middle Egyptian, on page 45. I’ll include a screenshot. Note Allen’s last couple lines:

“In Ptolemaic and Roman times, the fad for new and clever spellings was so popular that the hieroglyphic system itself was practically reinvented; one
text even consists mostly of crocodile signs, each of which is to be read differently. These later texts
are much more difficult to read than most hieroglyphic inscriptions, even for specialists.”

I’ll include a couple other screenshots which describe examples of the “type of” thing we’re perhaps dealing with in Bricarello’s observation. Keep in mind, Bricarello was working at the famed Egyptian Museum in Turin and was presumably familiar with untold numbers of Egyptian artifacts and the language. 

As far as the additional marks and lines go, the idea is that Abraham is IN Egypt, not that everything is part of the spelling of Abraham. But those lines don’t really interfere or overlap the spelling, so I don’t see why they would be an issue. It’s like if a picture is of a person IN a restaurant, and you can still see the person, it makes no sense to complain about the table and food being part of the picture. 

The Upper Egypt part is something very well known. Just google “lotus” and “upper egypt.” 

The left part of the “m” tilts to the right instead of to the left, but the brush strokes are othwise very similar. 

This is strikingly similar to modern youth meme culture. 

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

[helix]

2 hours ago, Latter Day Data said:

Above, I provided a couple examples in the form of screenshots from literature describing this “type” of thing. Let me know if you can read the screenshots.
Also, in an above post I showed a famous rebus of Ramesses. 

But these examples are about wordplay.  Cultures throughout history have employed wordplay.  You supplied examples of people using Egyptian in clever ways for jokes, double meanings, similar sounds, and puns.  That's nothing at all all what was pitched in the blog post.

The Abraham in the Lotus argument claims the artist hid four hieroglyphics for "I B R M" within the shape of a lotus, and then added some additional fluff lines and dots to complete the picture of the flower. 

What you have yet to do is show us any equivalent Egyptian artwork that embeds within a figure a sequence of hieroglyphics forming a word or a name.   

Edited March 24, 2022 by helix

[Latter Day Data]

40 minutes ago, helix said:

But these examples are about wordplay.  Cultures throughout history have employed wordplay.  You supplied examples of people using Egyptian in clever ways for jokes, double meanings, similar sounds, and puns.  That's nothing at all all what was pitched in the blog post.

The Abraham in the Lotus argument claims the artist hid four hieroglyphics for "I B R M" within the shape of a lotus, and then added some additional fluff lines and dots to complete the picture of the flower. 

What you have yet to do is show us any equivalent Egyptian artwork that embeds within a figure a sequence of hieroglyphics forming a word or a name.   

This is the only point you are now addressing. Do you also take issue with my answers to the other points you raised earlier? Or, did I resolve your concerns on those points? 

To clarify, I didn’t say the name was hidden. In fact, it’s pretty much in plain sight. It’s similar to the name of Horus (the falcon) being put inside an enclosure. It’s Horus IN a house, thus House of Horus. Same principle. The name Horus in a representation of a house, the name Abraham in a representation of Egypt. What is the problem, exactly? 

[helix]

Let me try this at another angle.  I'm not after you persuading me.  I'm desiring a strong argument.  I'd like to see precedence, or carefully laid out explanation as to Upper Egypt, or addressing extraneous lines and dots.  What I'm getting is ad-hoc fluff guesses and an assertion to "just google" it.  That's not helpful, and it's definitely not persuasive. 

Quote

In fact, it’s pretty much in plain sight. It’s similar to the name of Horus (the falcon) being put inside an enclosure. It’s Horus IN a house, thus House of Horus. Same principle.

No it's not the same principle.  Not at all.   Your follow-up examples provided logographic wordplays.  But your blog post claims a phonetic play into a larger symbol.  What I want is other examples where phonetic play is mixed into an Egyptian figure.  That has yet to be provided.
 
Here, I'll use an example with American Sign Language.  The sign for "family" is to make an F-letter in each hand, touching thumbs, then rotating the hands so the pinkies touch.  It's a fun little way to encode the "f" into a family circle.  The sign for a church "ward" is the same as family, except we substitute the F-letter for a W-letter in each hand, so now it's a "ward family" pun.   At no point was this fully phonetic or alphabetic.  In other words, at no point were a sequence of sounds or letters or used to spell out "family" or "ward".   But by combining non-phoentic symbolism, we got deeper meaning for "family" and "ward".

Hathor (not Horus) is similar wordplay.  Hathor means Enclosure of Horus.  So the falcon representing Horus is put inside the box representing enclosure, and bingo, "Enclosure of Horus".   It's wordplay.  At no point was Hathor or Horus phonetically sequenced.

Now your blog post claims the phonetic symbols for I B R M are given, one at a time, in a sequence, and arranged to form part of a lotus shape.  That's a good start of an argument.  I like it.  Help support the idea by demonstrating other examples where a sequence of phonetic symbols formed a word or a name and then was embedded as part of the shape of a larger symbol.

Back to ASL.  It has this too.  A family member's name may be spelled out letter-by-letter while simultaneously mixing in some symbolism for that person.  Or a the word "zap" can be simply spelled out, or it can be spelled out with facial expressions and emotions indicating more features of the zap.  That's phonetic mixed into a larger symbol.  

Edited March 24, 2022 by helix

[Calm]

41 minutes ago, helix said:

Now your blog post claims the phonetic symbols for I B R M are given, one at a time, in a sequence, and arranged to form part of a lotus shape.  That's a good start of an argument.  I like it.  Help support the idea by demonstrating other examples where a sequence of phonetic symbols formed a word or a name and then was embedded as part of the shape of a larger symbol.

Wouldn’t the parallel be the walls of a house being the phonetic symbols rather than the symbols being enclosed within a house?  Like the difference between a “names heart” (the line of the heart are the names of kids or grandkids)….kind of like a hidden picture vs a heart shape surrounding a list of names.

This is both…names are the lines of the heart and the rest fit inside it (maybe children are the heart and grandkids inside it)

https://www.theblanketloft.com/product/family-names-heart-design

Edited March 24, 2022 by Calm

[helix]

24 minutes ago, Calm said:

Wouldn’t the parallel be the walls of a house being the phonetic symbols rather than the symbols being enclosed within a house?  Like the difference between a “names heart” (the line of the heart are the names of kids or grandkids)….kind of like a hidden picture vs a heart shape surrounding a list of names.

Yes, something like that.

[Latter Day Data]

29 minutes ago, helix said:

Yes, something like that.

Will you quote a couple of my “ad hoc fluff guesses” so I’ll have a better idea what you are referring to? 

[helix]

2 hours ago, Latter Day Data said:

Will you quote a couple of my “ad hoc fluff guesses” so I’ll have a better idea what you are referring to? 

"As far as the additional marks and lines go, the idea is that Abraham is IN Egypt, not that everything is part of the spelling of Abraham. But those lines don’t really interfere or overlap the spelling, so I don’t see why they would be an issue. It’s like if a picture is of a person IN a restaurant, and you can still see the person, it makes no sense to complain about the table and food being part of the picture."

That statement is unsatisfying to me.  As I've said before, I've seen similar parallelomania with the Joseph Smith Caracters document where the person literally just ignores all lines and dots that don't fit the claimed match, then treated all that's leftover as a bulls-eye. 

For example, on that drawing of a lotus in our current facsimile 1, I could see someone arguing this: "the author drew the reed symbol as the top leaf of the lotus, then the leg symbol to form the stem and part of the flower, then the mouth symbol for the bottom leaf of the lotus.   But because the lotus wasn't complete, some more lines were added for it."  Fine, it's a stretch, but fine.  But then what's going on with that "o" with the line across the top?  I can't see any rhyme or reason why that line across the o should be there if the author is trying to just spell "I B R M".  Saying "These lines are to be ignored" is not satisfying, it doesn't explain why the author put it there in the first place. 
 

Edited March 25, 2022 by helix

[Latter Day Data]

1 hour ago, helix said:

"As far as the additional marks and lines go, the idea is that Abraham is IN Egypt, not that everything is part of the spelling of Abraham. But those lines don’t really interfere or overlap the spelling, so I don’t see why they would be an issue. It’s like if a picture is of a person IN a restaurant, and you can still see the person, it makes no sense to complain about the table and food being part of the picture."

That statement is unsatisfying to me.  As I've said before, I've seen similar parallelomania with the Joseph Smith Caracters document where the person literally just ignoring all lines and dots that don't fit the claimed match, then treated it as a bulls-eye. 

For example, on that drawing of a lotus in our current facsimile 1, I could see someone arguing this: "the author drew the reed symbol as the top leaf of the lotus, then the leg symbol to form the stem and part of the flower, then the mouth symbol for the bottom leaf of the lotus.   But because the lotus wasn't complete, some more lines were added for it."  Fine, it's a stretch, but fine.  But then what's going on with that "o" with the line across the top?  I can't see any rhyme or reason why that line across the o should be there if the author is trying to just spell "I B R M".  Saying "These lines are to be ignored" is not satisfying, it doesn't explain why the author put it there in the first place. 
 

First, with the caractors experience on this board, are you saying they found similarity between what was on the caractors document and random ancient characters, or are you saying they spelled out in sequence something which Joseph Smith had directly associated the characters with? If it’s the former, that sounds a lot different than what I’m doing. If Joseph said, “these characters represent Mormon” and people on the board were using ancient characters to spell out “Mormon,” while at the same time arguing that Joseph pointed to those characters in the right sequence, on *top* of arguing that the ancient characters closely resemble the ones in the caractors document, that would be more analogous to what I’m doing. 

Second, Joseph Smith gave us two things to look for. Abraham, and Egypt, with Abraham “in Egypt.” So we’re not looking for just characters spelling a name. Having a representation of Egypt drawn alongside Abraham is a match, not a problem.

Like I pointed out earlier, scribes in the Prolemaic era were inventing new, creative ways of representing words. Like spelling out something in a way that makes it look like catching birds with a hand. That’s a visual representation of catching birds. That’s not just sounding something out. It’s using hieroglyphs to create a picture to creatively represent an image which is not inherent in their grammatical meaning.

Third, the fact this offering table is so much different than other offering tables makes it quite an anomoly. But the fact it’s different in a way that’s consistent with Joseph Smith’s claim makes it very remarkable. It’s not proof, but it’s consistent in a way that no other offering table out there seems to be. 

Fourth, yes, what I’m proposing is very similar to the *name* of Horus being put inside a house. We’re talking about names being put inside of things in order to *visually depict the names being inside the other things.* The falcon literally spells Horus, and it is used in that context in the name Hathor, as I explained earlier (hopefully you read the screenshots - did you?). The papyrus owner has the same name, and his name is written as the falcon glyph. 

I’ll be happy to continue discussing all of this, as time permits.

[Tacenda]

Does this help Latter Day Data's case, but maybe it's old news?

https://armstronginstitute.org/686-breaking-news-ancient-hebrew-curse-tablet-discovered-at-joshuas-altar-on-mt-ebal?fbclid=IwAR1Ql7cNIUbOwzUmCptfYz1ysmarsDOP3WvxxYM5xR6hryeKbp_al5u5_KQ

Edited March 25, 2022 by Tacenda

[Latter Day Data]

27 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Does this help Latter Day Data's case, but maybe it's old news?

https://armstronginstitute.org/686-breaking-news-ancient-hebrew-curse-tablet-discovered-at-joshuas-altar-on-mt-ebal?fbclid=IwAR1Ql7cNIUbOwzUmCptfYz1ysmarsDOP3WvxxYM5xR6hryeKbp_al5u5_KQ

That is really fascinating. I’m really glad you shared that, thank you. It might relate directly to my argument, but it goes to show that we can’t rely on old assumptions about what the ancients were up to 😊

[Latter Day Data]

On 3/24/2022 at 7:29 PM, helix said:

"As far as the additional marks and lines go, the idea is that Abraham is IN Egypt, not that everything is part of the spelling of Abraham. But those lines don’t really interfere or overlap the spelling, so I don’t see why they would be an issue. It’s like if a picture is of a person IN a restaurant, and you can still see the person, it makes no sense to complain about the table and food being part of the picture."

That statement is unsatisfying to me.  As I've said before, I've seen similar parallelomania with the Joseph Smith Caracters document where the person literally just ignores all lines and dots that don't fit the claimed match, then treated all that's leftover as a bulls-eye. 

For example, on that drawing of a lotus in our current facsimile 1, I could see someone arguing this: "the author drew the reed symbol as the top leaf of the lotus, then the leg symbol to form the stem and part of the flower, then the mouth symbol for the bottom leaf of the lotus.   But because the lotus wasn't complete, some more lines were added for it."  Fine, it's a stretch, but fine.  But then what's going on with that "o" with the line across the top?  I can't see any rhyme or reason why that line across the o should be there if the author is trying to just spell "I B R M".  Saying "These lines are to be ignored" is not satisfying, it doesn't explain why the author put it there in the first place. 
 

In addition to my last reply to you, I wanted to find some specific excerpts with sources, regarding the lotus being a symbol of Upper Egypt. Thank you again. 

[Ryan Dahle]

@Latter Day Data I suppose we also have this example which is somewhat analogous: 

Edited March 31, 2022 by Ryan Dahle

[Latter Day Data]

On 3/31/2022 at 1:40 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

@Latter Day Data I suppose we also have this example which is somewhat analogous: 

Very interesting, thank you for sharing that 😊